On November 10, a “Synodal Committee” created by the recently completed German “Synodal Way” met for the first time. The committee’s mandate is to prepare the foundations for a “Synodal Council” of laity, clergy, and bishops to govern the Catholic Church in Germany from 2026 on. The idea of such a “Synodal Council” has already been rejected by the Holy See.
And in a recent letter to four German laywomen who had resigned from the “Synodal Way” to protest deviations from settled Catholic truths and practices, Pope Francis reiterated that the “Synodal Council” cannot be reconciled “with the sacramental structure of the Catholic Church.”
The Pope also said this about the current state of Catholic affairs in Germany:
Instead of seeking ‘salvation’ in ever new committees and discussing the same topics with a certain self-absorption, in my Letter to the People of God in Germany I wanted to recall the need for prayer, penance, and adoration, and invite people to open up and go out to meet ‘our brothers and sisters, especially those who are abandoned on the steps of our churches, on the streets, in prisons and hospitals, squares and cities.’ I am convinced that this is where the Lord will show us the way.
About which, perhaps a few things may be observed:
Doesn’t “seeking ‘salvation’ in ever new committees and discussing the same topics with a certain self-absorption” describe precisely what Synod-2023 did for four agonizingly long weeks two months ago — and what the preparatory local, national, and continental “phases” of the Synod on Synodality were doing, at a great cost in time and money, for the past two years?
Why is “salvation” in quotation marks in the Pope’s letter? Is it because he’s referring to “saving” the institution of the German Church, which is hemorrhaging congregants (and thus losing revenue, because fewer self-identified Catholic congregants means the institution gets less of a cut of the German Church tax)? Given the German context, that suggests why “salvation” was put in quotation marks. But it might also be noted that the theme of salvation in its full biblical and theological sense — and the corollary notion of the Lord Jesus as the unique and sole savior of humanity — was not explored in any great depth during Synod-2023, or during the German “Synodal Path.”
Which leads to a third point: The Pope suggests that institutional German Catholicism will save itself by opening itself up to the poor, displaced, and marginalized in society. The German Church already does that, however, maintaining (with the help of the Church tax) a considerable network of social service agencies and programs. If meeting the marginalized were the answer to contemporary German Catholicism’s religious ennui and evangelical anemia, the German Church would have become a powerful engine of the New Evangelization decades ago.
But it didn’t, and it isn’t. The reason why has little or nothing to do with a failure to meet the marginalized, and everything to do with that loss of faith in Jesus as Lord, and in the Church as his sacramental Body in the world, that turns local Churches into non-governmental organizations doing good works. Meeting the Lord Jesus in Word and Sacrament is (to borrow from the Pope’s letter) “what will show us the way.”
It was interesting that, at Synod-2023, the “hot-button” issues beloved of the German Synodal Way were, in the main, not pressed by Germans, but by others. The president of the German bishops’ conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, oozed gemütlichkeit throughout, a smile constantly on his face. Perhaps this deliberately low profile reflected a recognition by the German bishops’ leadership that it would be inadvisable to inflame things in Rome, given their fractious situation at home. But another reading of those tea leaves is possible.
As suggested in this space before, some of those in charge of the “Synod on Synodality” may have regarded the German “Synodal Path” as a useful instrument in clearing the path for a dramatic reconfiguration of Catholic self-understanding and governance, moving the goalposts so far to the left that the old 50-yard line of the Catholic Vital Center would now be the old left end zone.
Those of that cast of mind may not have wanted the Germans to get so far out front as to give the whole game away before Synod-2024 meets next October; so the German stalking horse was advised to trot, not gallop.
Which might suggest that German Catholicism is not regarded in certain Roman circles as being “on the brink” so much as “at the cutting edge.”
(George Weigel’s column ‘The Catholic Difference’ is syndicated by the Denver Catholic, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Denver.)
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To answer your question, ” . . brink or cutting edge”, “brink” if viewed from the perspective of Protestant Politics, “edge”
if ALSO viewed from the perspective of Protestant Politics.
Sorry, but Protestantism has nothing to do with the discussion. The German “church” stands, falls, orsinks into irrelevance on its own merit. It has no one to blame but itself.
Very interesting George, I hope that it’s not on the cutting edge but for the sake of the Church of our Lord the German synodal way is on the brink.
The title to Pope Francis’ “Letter to the People of God in Germany” recalls–more or less–the somewhat similar title to Pope Benedict’s 2007 “Letter to the Bishops, priests, consecrated men and women and the lay faithful of the Catholic Church in the Peoples’ Republic of China.”
Benedict’s message was threefold: that the Church is not an instrument of any Western political entities, that members of the loyal underground Church and the official Chinese church must be reconciled as one, and that bishops in the official church must openly identify as united with the papacy of the Catholic Church.
Perhaps the ambiguity, and worse, about synodality and about der Synodal Weg is the different “synodal” strategy as more of an end run of indiscriminate inclusiveness (“everybody,” even the “non-synod” in Germania…).
Instead of conceptual clarity with doctrinal and moral steadfastness, how about a strategy of fluid “provisional agreements”—as if eventually “time is greater than space; realities are more important than ideas; unity prevails over conflict; the whole is greater than the part” (the four italicized “principles” superimposed within “Evangelii Gaudium”)?
IF such a catch-all/synoptic synodality (synop-dality?) still has something to offer in navigating the incoherence of our current moment, then HOW should it be done, and WHO should do it (Fernandez, Batzing, Hollerich!!!)?
One recommendation (“synodal”!) is that IF Synod 2024 pivots into a prelude for 2025—the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325), THEN the Church must rediscover that rather than a synodal process of harmonized consensus (?), Nicaea was first a faithful remembering and therefore the exclusion (!) of Arianism!
(Arianism, like der Synodal Weg a “stalking horse,” and a wedge to readmit pagan polytheism alongside the Incarnation and into the Mystical Body of Christ.)
Can’t help but notice, too, the instructive parallel from the Nicaea era of how St. Athanasius (who wrote “Of the Incarnation of the Word of God” probably in A.D. 318) was exiled five times…and later how St. Jerome non-synodally (?) stated the obvious about the vast majority of business-as-usual bishops: “the whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian.”
Synodaling is a buffalo jump. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump
Heresiarchs stamped the faithful toward a doctrinal cliff before halting at the heretical edge as the faithful fall into the abyss of pastoral heresies.
According to Psalm 127:
*
Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
A telling assessment of the papal fallacy to situate the problem within lack of social justice programs for the less fortunate. As Francis is prone to do beyond Germany. Having lived three years in West Germany with our military it was apparent back then that the Germans were very focused on caring for the poor, what with the large displacement of Germans from the east, migrants from Turkey, Italy to enter the workforce for an upward catapulting economy.
As his record shows His Holiness is fixated on the social issues rather than the spiritual, giving the latter lip service while promoting the former as Weigel correctly assesses. His cutting edge pertains to the German Synodale Weg which suddenly seemed to have lost steam, is instead perceived by Weigel’s penetrating eye as ‘the German stalking horse advised to trot, not gallop’. The Vatican War Room in apparent communicado with a perennial smiling Bätzing cabled, ‘Whoa. Hold onto your horses lest we blow the gameplan’.
‘Loss of faith in Jesus as Lord, and in the Church as his sacramental Body in the world’ is right on the mark insofar as Pope Francis envisions things for the Church, whether he’s conscientiously aware or not. A question preferably left to Our Lord. ‘Big questions ahead’ may well reveal what the cutting edge is, if not the collapse of Catholic Christianity as already appears the case in Germany. Faith in Christ as Lord and Savior continues to be challenged, our steadfast faith the more glorified in him.
The Irish are fond of putting their foot in their mouths and the Japanese are fond of apologizing…but the Germans…are they actually fond of being hated?
Adam and Eve forgot the love of their creator and sought their own meaning of existence. History is about human vanity and its continuing chaos. The history of the Church has had factions seduced by the same elementary temptation of Satan to practice the great forgetting, to recreate the world in their own image, to lose sight that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Good to see another sign from Weigel awakening to the neophilia of this pontificate. The German Synod is just doctrinal nihilism in a hurry as communists used to say about communism. It’s only threat is to expose the whole synodal exercise as the fraudulent attempt to replace the salvation of souls with the building of the secular state with vestigial religious overtones.
Great article. True, it’s fideliphobia. They may be at the cutting edge of cutting themselves off from Jesus Christ?
Birgit Kelle has already explained the purpose of “Tha-Syn-Od” for the establishment in Germany and the world: establish the “Dirty Schism” as universal church model, where apostasy is the rule, and obedience to Christ is outlawed.
Cutting edge of schism, almost certainly. Far too many Catholic clerics, and Bishops, etc have mistaken socialism for Christianity. They are in fact quite different. I am sure I speak for many that while our borders are battered by illegals at the recent rate of 12,000 PER DAY, I grow weary of reading about Catholic social agency efforts to help ease their way. They should be counseling these people to come here legally, if at all, instead of burdening the current citizenry. It has reached the stage in NYC that the budget for the police and SCHOOLS are being slashed to help pay for amenities for illegals who have no right to be here.The sheer numbers of illegals are unsustainable and must be ended. As for the Germans stance on women’s roles and various sexual activities which for thousands of years have been considered sins, they are also moving to consensus with the secular world. But does it really matter if the Pope suggests that people in confession must be forgiven regardless as to whether they have actually repented. Catholic teaching is so yesterday, they appear to think! Just punch their ticket and let them go. After all, what good can come of sinners feeling guilty??
There have always been laity and clergy in the Church who were more comfortable with aligning the Church with society’s or the ruling class’s perspective. Many Protestant denominations fit this model. And some who remained in the Church succumbed to this in certain eras and places. In essence, this perspective subordinates Church teaching to prominent worldviews or rulers. Russian Orthodoxy and Putin is another example.